Playing PBEM or MP is a great experience, much more fun and more challenging than playing against the AI. Go here to find other players for live internet games, and go here for advice on PBEM etiquette and house rules

I love posting the stories of my PBEM games onto the forum for others to read, but what if you're not as much of an exhibitionist as me? Maybe you fancy trying PBEM, but don't really know how to set up a game, and don't want to post your moves on the forum in case you make a total mess-up of it

Playing a simple two-player map privately is a good way to start. What you can do is look for people in this PBEM forum that might want to play, find their email address from their profile, and send them an email asking if they would like to play a private one-on-one PBEM game with you

But perhaps both of you are newbies and don't want to set the game up yourself. If you tell me what map you want, which player wants which race, and your email addresses I'm quite happy to set up games for people. If you want you can even email me, asking me to play in a private one-on-one game, rampantroj(at)yahoo.com, but I already play in a lot of games so please don't take it personally if I have to say no!

Suggested starter maps would be my small newbie map, Warm Crevice, download it here, Blood Isles (download Jerk's excellent World Cup version of Blood Isles here), Eleventyfirst Day, download it here, Mountain Clash, Barondir Bay or First Conflict, but I can set up whatever you want. All I would ask is that if you play a map from the downloads section, after playing it please go back to the download section and give your opinion of the map as a rating, as a thank you for all the hard work the map-maker put in when creating the map for you to play

So don't be shy! Give it a try! Don't pass it by!

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HOW TO SET UP A PBEM GAME

First of all you need to know:

Which map you want to play

Which players want to play which races

The email addresses of the players

THEN

Select scenario then play by email then new game

Select the map that you want to play

This will bring up a list of all races that are available in this map. Change the races that will be played by humans to human using the dropdown menu against the appropriate race. Any race that you do not want to be played in the game, either by a human or by the AI, change to independent. Depending on how much opposition you want from the AI during the game you can set AI races to CPU squire or knight or lord or king or emperor, or you can leave them on the settings selected by the mapmaker

Select whether you want leaders on the map. Although the button will initially be lit up, meaning leaders on, PBEM games are usually played with leaders off. A few maps, usually those where you only start with a hero and nothing else, cannot be played with leaders off, and some players prefer playing with leaders on. That is because you only need to kill somebody’s hero for their race to die, rather than chasing around trying to find every last enemy unit before you win

Select whether you want allied victory to be possible or not, I usually set it on because otherwise race relations have a habit of resetting themselves during a match to question marks, which can be very frustrating

Select whether you want exploration on. It will virtually always be on in PBEM, as being able to see all the map spoils the fun for most people

Once that screen has been completed, press start, which takes you to the email game settings screen

It should show the email address in local email address that you want other people to send your game files to. You can change this by pressing settings

As well as being able to edit your local email address here, you can also enter your SMTP server if you want, although it’s not essential unless you want to send turns on automatically. As a rough guide if you log onto the internet using tiscali.co.uk your SMTP is probably smtp.tiscali.co.uk, but this rule is only a rough guide, and I am not aware of how to send turns on automatically if you use AOL, for example

You can enter your attachment directory too if you want, it’s not essential, it is the folder where your email program automatically saves incoming email attachments. I have it set to triumphstudios/ageofwonders/emailin but I’m not sure what difference it makes, if any

Go back to the email game settings screen. You will see that the computer will have listed the different races being played by humans, and it lists them in the order that they will play in the game, and against each race your email address will be listed (I don’t see the point of that, and hope that will change in AoW II). You need to go to each race that you will not be playing, and change the email address (from your address) to that of the person who wants to play that particular race. Last of all you fill in the email game name field, with the map name and the players playing, in the order that they will be playing. Let me give you an example:

You will see from the order in the email game settings screen that play order is: elves, orcs, halflings, goblins, so you might set the email game name as:First Conflict (Archie, Bill, Charlie, Dave)

The order of the names is important. Firstly it reminds people what order they play in, and helps them know who to send it to next. Also if you start a thread in the AoW PBEM Forum for the new game, then once you have sent a turn on you can give your friends (and other forum members) a brief description of what you did during your turn. That may sound a bit silly, but it really adds to the fun and role-playing for me

So that's the game started, but how about sending turns and receiving them? Hopefully in an ideal world you will have set up automatic sending, which is especially useful if you are in lots of PBEMs. But if you have to send manually:

Draft your email message, go to attachments, then go to the emailout folder of your PC (for many people that's C:\programfiles\triumphstudios\ageofwonders\emailout, but not everyone). Select the correct game for the person you are sending a message to (if you're in more than one game), attach it and send it

When you receive a game by email, save the attachment to your emailin folder. ALWAYS REMEMBER, SEND FROM EMAILOUT, SAVE TO EMAILIN. Why worry? Because if you send from emailin the next player will see all your properties and troops when they load the game. And if you save to emailout, when you try to load the game the computer won't let you. So it is important. The best way is to send automatically, if you possibly can

Once you become familiar with this process, you may want to change the order that people play in, to take account of different time zones of players from around the world. That involves using the editor. If you feel that brave (!) Frogman has done a guide for you, which is here

If you want to change an email address part way through the game, for example when a new player substitutes for one of the original players: when the player BEFORE the substituted player has their autosend message at the end of their turn, they can edit the email address the game sends to. The new address will be the new default, so it only needs to be done once

I'm not sure how to do this, but I need to in a game that I set up and would suggest an addition from someone who knows how. And that is - changing an email in the set up of an existing game. Can this be done, and if so, how? This is necessary for when we add a substitute to a game or if someone changes their email.

NojdMember

posted
10-02-01 11:36 AM
EDT (US)
6 / 18

That's easy!

When the player before the substituted player gets his autosend dialog at end of turn, he/she can edit the email address the game gets sent to. The new address will be the new default, so it needs only be done once.

CryHavokMember

posted
10-10-01 12:14 PM
EDT (US)
7 / 18

Does anyone know how to setup the automatic mailer for free services like Hotmail or Yahoo?

You can also get WR from our MISC downloads section. On its DESC page, there are lots of hints for trouble-shooting if you have problems installing it. Direct all other tech quections to the Mod Packs & Warlock's Rules forum.

Here's a useful piece of info from Arctic Wolf, about the problem with the hero not joining for the person setting up the PBEM game.

Quoted from Arctic Wolf:

It's been bugging me for a while. Whenever I set up a PBEM map, and I'm player number 1, and the map is set to allow a hero to join.....I never get the freaking hero...

I did tons of tests, the hero always joins the other players, but never me..

Tried playing the maps as scenarios (not PBEM) and the hero joins. Play Enginerd or sprout...no hero and they get one..(not that they need help against me)

Finally I solved the mystery. In my setting for PBEM I of course have my regular email address, and the turn automatically starts without a save. (I'm player One remember.) But if I put in a dummy email address as the local PC and email turn 1 to myself....

Voila..I get my Hero.

XenobeaMember

posted
04-08-04 07:39 PM
EDT (US)
15 / 18

I thought I might note that it is often done to edit the map to add a hero for each player if you play leaders off... of course you have to be careful to choose somewhat equal heroes.

AlphaxMember

posted
04-09-04 04:52 AM
EDT (US)
16 / 18

Any suggestions for a starter map for a 1-1 Wizards Ladder game? Preferebly something easy.